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LAKE LOUISE - A two-and-a-half-year-old grizzly bear left orphaned when his mother was plowed down by a train last year has made it through the busy summer months - but the fate of his sibling is not known for sure.

The young bruin, known as Bear 128, was last seen hanging out on the slopes of the Lake Louise ski hill, but he has not been traveling with another bear all summer long and had not been seen with his sibling since May.

“I don’t know what happened for sure, but I think it’s possible the other bear made it, too,” said Brianna Burley, a human-wildlife conflict specialist for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay.

The mother of the young grizzly bears was killed on the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks on May 28, 2011, in what was considered a blow to the regional grizzly population, which is estimated to be around 60.

The biggest natural threat to young bears out on their own are other bears and wolves, though roads and train tracks have also proven extremely deadly over the years.

Both youngsters made it into the den on their own last winter and emerged together in the spring. The first reported sighting of them was along the Bow Valley Parkway, east of Lake Louise.

Parks Canada ended up capturing Bear 128 in May of this year as part of a joint Parks Canada-Canadian Pacific Railway research collaring project to investigate ways to end the ongoing deaths of grizzly bears on the tracks.

As 128 was being fitted with an ear transmitter so wildlife experts can track his movements, his sibling was seen in the general vicinity. The sex of the other orphaned bear is not known.

At the time of 128’s capture, he weighed in at just 72 pounds, but Burley said he looks quite healthy now.

“He doesn’t look like he’s starving and he’s done well in finding food. Right now I have no reason to believe he wouldn’t den,” she said.

“I really hope he makes it through the winter. I’d like him to have a successful life in the Bow Valley.”

The bear disappeared from Parks Canada’s radar for about three weeks last month, but showed up on the Lake Louise ski hill last week. He has spent much of his time along the Bow Valley Parkway and Moraine Lake Road this summer.

“He sticks pretty close to human development,” Burley said.

Wildlife experts have been very aggressive in trying to scare the bear away from the park’s roadsides, where hordes of tourists stop to take that once-in-a-lifetime photo.

A resource conservation officer monitored him daily during daylight hours earlier this summer, and he was subjected to an intensive aversive conditioning program of noise makers and paintball guns shot near him, though not at him.

“Earlier this summer he spent so much time on the 1A with people encroaching him and giving him no space, he did seem to show a bit of agitation for a while,” Burley said.

“We tried to make sure he stayed away from roads and people through aversive conditioning and that seemed to have a positive effect, because it caused a fair amount of stress to him.”

Research with the long-term Eastern Slopes Grizzly Bear Project revealed cubs in this region, on average, typically stay with their mothers for about four years.

Earlier this year, 11 bears were fitted with GPS collars and five younger bears were fitted with ear transmitters so wildlife experts can track their movements in a bid to prevent bears dying on the train tracks.

Trains are the single biggest killer of grizzly bears in Banff National Park. There have been 10 known grizzly bear mortalities on the tracks since 2001, including eight over the last six years.

The mother of the two orphaned cubs was one of four human-caused grizzly bear deaths in Banff in 2011. There have been no grizzlies killed in the park at the hands of humans so far this year.

Cathy Ellis is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain Outlook

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